The case for keeping a 750-pound crane tire in your backyard

A couple years back, frustrated with my creeping weight levels, I started working with a trainer, Jeff, who treated our sessions like chef's specials. Some days, we'd lift. Other days, we'd do old-school suicides. One day, to work on speed and acceleration and possibly my humiliation threshold, he had me fetching tennis balls like a golden retriever. Every time, we'd do so many core moves that I'd leave a pool of sweat on the mat for the interns to clean up afterwards.

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Then one day Jeff took me outside to show me, with evident pride, a heap of dirty rubber detritus he'd found at the side of the road. Truck tires of all sizes that, he indicated, would serve as my new training partners. So on we went. Some we'd flip. Some we'd jump on. Some we'd slug with a sledgehammer. I knew all about these kinds of workouts. Living in Gainesville, Florida, I've been exposed to plenty of high-profile flippers (like Olympic star Ryan Lochte, who does these workouts here with trainer Matt DeLancey, and University of Florida basketball player Patric Young who has posted his tire-workout videos on Twitter). Jeff and I spent many sessions doing all these moves, mainly working with the second-biggest tires he had. After weeks of training, I wanted a shot at his biggest—a 550-pound beast that we had only joked about me trying to lift. At the end of one workout, I squatted, dug my hands underneath, lifted, and pushed (partly with my face) that sucker over.

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I was hooked. I swung by the commercial tire business and picked up two specimens—a 140-pound truck tire and a 40-pound forklift tire. I began doing backyard workouts with buddies as we trained for a variety of mud/obstacle races, and stored my new gear in the garage, blocking some of my wife's gardening supplies and creating a blip of marital tension.

But two wasn't enough. Tire fever had set in. I now wanted to get tires of all sizes, like a dumbbell rack you'd see at the gym, except for the fact that you'd need acres, not a just a corner or a wall, to house them. I couldn't help it. Tires—I now announced to my wife, or any friend, co-worker, or neighbor who dared asked me about them—were the perfect pieces of exercise equipment. They're versatile. They're usually free (tire shops have to pay to have scrap ones hauled off, so most are happy for you to take them). They can challenge your entire body. And, at least symbolically, they're manufactured with equal parts grub, grime, and testosterone. I needed more.

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So one day, when I was driving my wife's truck back from work, I happened to take a little detour to the commercial tire place again. As I looked over the heap of scrap rubber, the owner told me that most of the good ones were already gone. High schools had come for them, he said. So had middle schools. Sports teams. Gyms. Dojos. Everybody, it seemed, wanted their athletes, clients or students to use them.

But I didn't want the sort of tire they were looking for. I wanted something big. And as I scanned the yard, I saw my choice standing up amidst the other orphans. It looked to be around five feet high, much beefier than the others I had, and by the looks of it weighing about as much as the starting five of a middle-school basketball team. I was sold. "This one looks good," I said.

The guy told me to back the truck up while he grabbed the forklift. As he lowered the tire into the truck, he said, "You sure you're going to be able to get it out?"

This I had not considered.

"No problem," I said anyway.

I'll spare you the details, except to say I got the tire out of the truck with help from my uncommonly strong wife, it nearly got away from us and ran over her father who was recovering from a broken leg, and we were forced to call in a buddy to pick it up once it fell over in the driveway. But I did eventually get it into the yard.

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Later, I tried to look up the dimensions of my new acquisition, and from best I could tell, I picked a crane tire that weighed 750 pounds, and quite possibly more. I wanted a big one, but I hadn't intended to get one that big. Yes, it typically takes two of us to flip it and we once bent a barbell trying to get it up when it was filled with water. And I still hate the time that a neighbor passed us, asked if he could try to flip it, struggled two or three times, then got it up and over by himself, in front of his wife and kids. Prick. But I wouldn't trade it in, even if I could get it back in the truck, which I can't.

My training buddies and I try to do a tire-based workout once a week for strength, power, endurance, balance, and calorie-burn. (See workout, below.) The only downside for some folks to get into the tire business, of course, may be storage and transport. While I'd like to find another to add the collection—something in the 250- to 300-pound range—I think I'll wait. Especially considering what my wife told me when I got it home: "That's the last time you're using the truck."

CREATE YOUR OWN WORKOUTS

Here are some of the moves you can use to work all parts of your body in all kinds of ways. Most of the exercises below also work your core and have sports-specific applications (be it explosion or quickness).

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Pick a medium-sized tire (ideally, you'll want one that you can flip yourself). "No matter the implement, don't let the excitement or tool allow you to forget what's most important," says David Jack, director of Teamworks Fitness in Acton, Massachusetts. "Good form is good form and good posture is good posture all the time." The options for exercises are endless; here are a few to get you started:

Sledgehammer Hits: Stand next to the tire with your feet shoulder-width apart and your knees bent, while holding a sledgehammer. Swing the sledgehammer above your head with your hands wide apart. Whack the hell out of it. (Take a few light swings to gauge the bounce-back.)

Total-Body Combos: Do two flips, do a two-footed jump up onto the tire, jump out and off the tire, drop, and do two push-ups. Repeat for 1 minute.

Upper-Body Moves

Twisters: "Put both feet on the tire and your hands on the ground," says Jeff Plasschaert, exercise physiologist at the Shands Fitness and Wellness Center in Florida, who introduced me to tire workouts. "Do push-ups at 12, 3, 6, and 9 o'clock, keeping your feet on the tire as you hand-walk to each position."

Crab Walk: Place both heels on the tire and your hands on the ground so your stomach is facing the sky. Walk your way around the tire with your hands, keeping your heels on the tire.

The Life Saver: I attached a 25-foot rope to my large tire so we could pull it. Pull the tire toward you by going hand over hand with the rope.

Lower-Body Moves

Plyometric Jumps: Jump up onto the tire, jump into the center, jump out. Do double or single leg.

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Toe Touches: Stand in front of the tire and touch the top of the tire with the bottom of your foot, quickly alternating feet. "They're great to work the core and hip flexors while using a sprinting motion," says Martin Rooney, director of the Parisi Speed School and author of Warrior Cardio. "It's great for cardio and fat burn as well as uses most of the body's muscles."

Balance Lunges: Stand on the tire with one foot in front and one foot in back. Lower yourself into a lunge, making sure your front knee doesn't extend past your foot.

Comedic Moves

The Outhouse: Have your partner to do an overhead squat holding a small tire over the head during the entire set. "If it just so happens to have some water in the tire, water comes out when they lift the tire up and soaks the person," Plasschaert says. "We call it 'The Outhouse.' More funny for the trainer than the client."

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